Novalie Dress | How to Sew a Girl’s Dress: Free Printable Pattern for Beginners

Here’s a free sewing pattern you can PRINT for an easy girl’s dress: sizes 2T, 4T, 6, 8, and 10! Plus, a video tutorial!

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

I’m so excited to share with you my newest free pattern today that you can print for FREE!

This is a basic little girl’s dress that comes in sizes 2T up to a 10.

Below, you”ll find the printable PDF pattern as well as a photographed tutorial. I have also filmed myself making this dress (in size 4T), so if you want a video tutorial, you can view that here!

I’m going to show you how to make this dress step by step.

I made this dress pattern with absolute beginners in mind, so even if you haven’t done much sewing but wanted to make a simple dress for a little girl in your life, you can do so with this pattern.

I used easy techniques and simple finishing methods so that anyone can try their hand at making a sweet little dress that holds up well to everyday play!

I do my best to clearly explain the construction and each step to this dress so that beginners can make a garment that turns out looking great!

Free patterns that can be printed is where my heart is, so if you aren’t a confident sewist and don’t want to spend the money on a pattern, or maybe you don’t have the financial means to purchase a pattern, I want this pattern to be available to you so that everyone can enjoy expanding their skillsets and try their hand at sewing.

Printing The Pattern

Use this form below to print out your free pattern:

This pattern can be printed at home on standard A4 size printer paper.

It prints on 9 total pages. 8 pages are the paper templates that you will assemble by taping together, and the other page is a guide for how to tape together this pattern, as well as a guide for how long and wide you will need to cut out your skirt panels.

How Much Fabric?

I would suggest budgeting for 1 yard of fabric for the two smallest sizes, and using 2 yards of fabric for the larger sizes.

You can also repurpose secondhand bed sheets from the thrift store to make this a super budget-friendly project.

The Bodice

Cut out all of your pattern pieces as specified on the pattern.

The bodice is the top part of the dress. Sort of like the shirt of the dress.

For the front of the bodice, you will need to cut out one piece in your main fabric, and one piece for lining.

There are two pieces for the back of the bodice, allowing the dress to open and close. You will want to cut two pieces in your main fabric and two pieces of your lining.

You will want these pieces to be mirrored, so after you use your template to cut out your first piece of fabric and lining, flip it over before cutting out your second piece of fabric and lining.

About Lining

For the lining, I often will use the same fabric as the main dress fabric if I have enough, or I use some neutral fabric that I have in my fabric stash that I might not be a tremendous fan of, since lining isn’t really seen on a garment.

The two main things you will want to consider when picking out a lining is that you don’t want your lining to be a super duper heavy material, and you also do not want it to be a color or print that might show through the dress in a negative way.

For example, lining a white dress with thick red canvas fabric is probably the worst possible thing you could choose to line it with.

The Skirt Panels

The skirt panels are cut as simple rectangles.

I do not have paper pattern pieces for them to cut out since they are very basic shapes and providing a paper pattern would just be a waste of paper and time.

Instead, I have a sizing chart for what sized skirt panels you will need to cut for each size dress.

You will cut 2 panels.

One skirt panel is attached to the front of the bodice, and the other skirt panel will be attached to the back of the bodice.

Sewing The Bodice

Next we’ll start assembling the dress together.

The first thing you will do is sew the front bodice and the lining for the front bodice right sides together at the curved neck line, and at the curved arms.

Leave the shoulders and other straight edges open.

You’ll want to use a 1/4″ seam allowance for this project. This means your seams should be about 1/4″ away from the edge of your fabric.

Next, clip into the seam allowance into your curved seams.

This will prevent the fabric from bunching.

Turn the front bodice right side out.

For each of the back bodice pieces, line up a piece of the fabric and a piece of the lining right sides together.

Just like with the front bodice, you want to sew the curved armhole and the curved neckline.

You will also want to sew the long straight edge for the center back all the way down.

This is the edge that will allow the dress to open and close.

Do NOT sew the straight edge under the armhole, just the center back.

Just like you did on your front bodice, clip into your curved seam allowance.

You’ll also want to snip the right angle corner of your fabric off where the neckline meets the center back – just be careful not to cut into your stitches.

Doing this allows the right angle corner of your dress to point out all the way instead of looking rounded.

Sewing French Seams

After turning your bodice pieces right sides together, iron them flat.

Then, bring them back to your sewing machine.

Lay your bodice pieces WRONG sides together.

This means that the “Pretty” sides of your fabric will be facing out, while the lining of each piece will be touching each other.

Sew the front bodice to the back bodice pieces at the shoulders, sewing as closely to the edge of the fabric as you can while still making sure you “catch” all of your layers of fabric.

Cut off any extra fabric as close to your stitches as you can without cutting INTO your stitches.

Then, turn the pieces right sides together, adn sew again at the shoulders.

This creates a nice and neat French seam, which will help your garment last a good long time.

Topstitch The Bodice

Next, you want to sew a line of stitches close to the edge around the arm holes, the neckline, and the center back of your dress.

This is called topstitching and helps keep the lining in place over time and keeps your dress looking nice and neat.

Some people like to make their stitch length just slightly longer when they top stitch to make the stitches look a little straighter, so if you’d like to do that here you can – just remember to put your stitch length back to normal before moving onto the next step.

Next, you will gather one of your skirt panel on the width side.

You want to do this by sewing a basting stitch all the way across.

You can do this on a sewing machine or by hand.

I can’t create a basting stitch with my treadle, so I created an uneven basting stitch by hand to gather the skirt.

You can see that for an uneven basting stitch, I just quickly move my needle in and out of the fabric to gather it on the needle, pull it onto the thread once the needle is full, and keep moving all the way across the fabric.

Don’t knot your thread for the basting stitch – just pull your thread once you’ve sewn across to create a nice gathered effect for the skirt.

If you want a more professional way to gather your skirt, you can use a machine to sew two lines of basting stitches right next to each other, then pull them both to get a very even gathering.

Attach The Skirt To The Bodice

Lay your bodice down on a flat surface, and adjust the gathered edge of your skirt panel to be the same width as the bottom of the front of the bodice and pin into place.

We’ll sew this portion with a french seam just like we did with the shoulders, so first sew wrong sides together, then carefully trim off any extra fabric without cutting into your stitches.

For this gathered part, it can be fairly easy to accidentally cut into your skirt while trimming off your extra seam allowance, so cut slowly so that you don’t accidentally snip your skirt. (ask me how I know, lol)

Then, turn right sides together, and sew across again, being careful not to catch any of your seam allowance into your new line of stitches.

This contains all the raw edges of your dress nicely.

You are going to do the exact same thing that you did to the front bodice to the back bodice, except that first you are going to slightly overlap your two back bodice pieces and sew them together at the bottom to hold them into place.

Finishing The Dress

Here comes the fun part where your dress really starts to look like a dress!

We are going to use a french seam again to sew the sides of the dress together.

So, line up one of the side seams of your dress wrong sides together (that’s the pretty side of the fabric showing).

We’re all humans, so if you notice that this lengthy seam no longer lines up perfectly in length, don’t worry about it – just line up the bottom of your arm holes evenly, and we will even out the skirt at the bottom here soon.

Sew this side seam starting at the arms and go all the way down to the bottom of the dress.

Trim off your seam allowance – again, do this part carefully so that you don’t accidentally cut into your skirt.

Then fold right sides together and sew down the side seam again.

Repeat for the other side of the dress.

Next, we’ll hem the bottom of the skirt.

If the bottom of the skirt became a little uneven, that’s okay.

You can recut a straight and even edge off of it now before continuing.

Then, you’ll want to hem the bottom of the dress by folding the raw edge over twice.

You can iron the hem first to really hold it into place and to make sure it looks nice and even before you sew it into place with the machine.

In my experience, ironing the hem will also make it so you don’t have to use any pins to hold the hem into place.

I’ll also admit that often I just follow my own “mom sewing rules” and fold and sew the hem as I go, forgoing both the iron and the pins.

For a closure on this dress, you can sew on buttons, a zipper, or even some velcro.

I find that velcro is probably the easiest notion to attach for a beginner.

You will just sure that the scratchy side of the velcro is facing scratchy side OUT, away from the want to make child’s skin, and that the soft side of the velcro is facing towards them.

Sew the velcro on by first sewing a square around the edges of the velcro, and then sew an “X” in the middle.

Here’s some great velcro to use for this dress!

I hope that this free pattern and tutorial blesses you and gives you the confidence to enjoy sewing for whatever child you know.

If these are the sorts of patterns and tutorials you would like to see more of, please let me know in the comments! I would love to hear if you made this dress!

Please take the time to see the other free patterns on my blog!

Happy sewing!